Since the big wigs at The Metropolitan Opera — cough, Pete Gelb — have been scared into submission, Chicago's WHPK-FM radio station will take on a simulcast of John Adams's controversial The Death of Klinghoffer.
Unless you have been under a rock, The Death of Klinghoffer has been the center of some heated discussion. Its topic, a hijacked cruise liner that ended in the death of handicapped Jewish-American Leon Klinghoffer, appears anti-Semitic, driving the audience to sympathize with the hijackers.
However you want to look at it, this has not gone over well with the Klinghoffer estate, where Leon's two daughters included a letter with the playbill on opening night.
But Africlassical confirmed that the current production will air tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 29, between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Central Time on radio station WHPK-FM Chicago.
The show, too, can be heard on the station's website via livestream here.
Well, it is anyone's right to protest — or to write an opera, for that matter — but if the New York institution does not have the guts to run it, perhaps the guys over in Chicago can give it a shot.
Thanks to Sergio Mims for premiering what he can.
